“Susan McCord’s unique vine design meanders along the border on one side of this Turkey Tracks pattern quilt. This quilt was probably made with a specific bed in mind — a bed with one long side against a wall.”
They also wrote:
“Because the background fabric appears different in the applique border, and it was repaired before the quilt was assembled, it may indicate that this border was from another quilt or was left over from another quilt and added to this one.” That white spot that you see on the appliqued border, by the fourth set of leaves down, is the repair … with a whiter fabric than the original backing.
Did she recycle it from another quilt? The colours of that appliqué border on this quilt are a good match for the quilt that you are going to see on Day 6, so you are likely going to want to toggle between the two then to compare (spoiler alert … it has all of it’s border). If it is recycled from another quilt, my big question is, what did that quilt look like and what are we missing seeing? What other wonderful creation did she make? I love that she did not stop herself from using it that border, just because the background colours don’t match. It is not something I immediately noticed until I read their description. I might have picked up on it sooner if I had seen it in person.
There are so many other fascinating details about this quilt. One is that the 1” wide, pink “garden maze” sashing is not pieced or inset. It is actually appliqued onto the top. I love that she made that choice!
For the borders, she made some more interesting choices. The top and bottom of the body/blocks portion of the quilt, have a single border that runs the width of that section; pink on the top and green on the bottom. The next set of borders on the top and bottom run across the full width of the quilt. Notice how the widths and colours on top and bottom are switched around, and how the addition of the extra green border on the bottom adds visual weight to the bottom of the quilt (that green is not a binding).
McCord also used multiple binding techniques. The top, bottom and the applique border side have the edges turned in; there is not separate binding. The right side, opposite the applique border, the notes say that the front has been turned to the back, but I would take that to mean that it is essentially a binding, as that piece had to be added on.
All these border choices and binding decisions mean that all four “borders” are different!
What do you think about all the choices she made while making this quilt?
Some other facts about this quilt:
Condition: very good/almost new
Hand pieced and hand appliqued
Borders: Top border measuring from inside to outside: 1 inch; 2.5 inches; 2.5 inches. Bottom border measuring from inside to outside: 2.25 inches; 2.5 inches; 1 inch. Proper right border is pieced and appliqued with a 4.75 inch.
Batting: Thin, cotton, will milling debris visible.
Quilting: hand quilted with hand quilted with white cotton thread at 19-12 stitches per inch, ½” between quilting lines; echo, single parallel lines, feathers and grid/crosshatch
Inscription: label with ink on back reads Mrs. C. M. Cannaday
My gentle PSA!
The curation of this collection of antique quilts each year is my gift to you all. Please feel free to share this gift and send this post to your quilting friends far and wide. The more people joining us, the merrier. And please join in the conversation in the comments. I would love to hear from you!
The museum writes: “This popular patchwork pattern is called Diamond Field. In Susan McCord’s hands it becomes a marvel of workmanship and design — tiny pieces of different fabrics expertly arranged and sewn together. The quilt top is evenly faded and the batting thin — it has seen much use and washing. Perhaps the quiltmaker or a family member slept under this quilt
Unfortunately some of the reference photos for the McCord quilts were taken many years ago and so are a lesser resolution than we might get today. This makes a deeper study, like fabrics used, a bit more challenging. However we can still focus on colour and value. I can see that she was working to create “rows” of colour in her composition, but sprinkled substitutions throughout and that there is some gradation happening with her “rows”.
I can also discern that she used a broad range of “reds” in the “sashing” hexagon pieces, from a medium pink through to a darker burgundy. She arranged the colour of the sashing also in rows, starting with a lighter pink on the bottom and moving to darker reds on the top, finishing off with the medium pink again, but she made lots of substitutions where she needed to. Mc Cord also added on darker streak on the right-hand side of “sashing” hexagons.
Note that the centres of each of the “diamonds” all seem to be on the light to medium side in terms of value, and that they are rather randomly distributed … no attempts at creating the same “rows” with them.
What I love about this quilt is how she used her keen eye and sense of design in combining all the different colour values and substitutions into a beautiful assymetrically balanced quilt. The result is that this rather simple block design has been transformed into a visually engaging composition full of surprises!
Does this quilt tempt you to make some hexagon diamonds? What do you think of her composition?
Some other facts about this quilt:
Condition Good/Moderate Use
Hand pieced
Borders: 1.25 inches on all sides.
Backing: Solid/plain cream cotton, hand sewn, three pieces (35 in; 35 in; 4.5 in) (inscriptions on back: PREMIUM / FINE / SHEETINGS / LL / (printed eagle))
Batting: Thin, cotton
Quilting: hand quilted, white cotton thread, 6-8 stitches per inch, elbow/fan quilting pattern, lines 1” apart.
Susan McCord made this outstanding example of the popular mid-19th century red and green floral quilts with a large flower and urn motifs. This particular design is known as the Harrison Rose after William Henry Harrison who was Indiana’s first territorial governor and ninth U.S. President. It is not hard to imagine that McCord’s wonderful flower gardens served as inspiration for her for this quilt.
When I was looking at this quilt as I was writing this post, I was staggered to see the meticulous care McCord had gone to, to assure exacting replication of the placement of elements within each of the urn blocks. What at first seems like near perfection, when examined more closely indeed reveals the traces of a human hand at work, with all sorts of interesting tidbits and twists that come to light. Those anomalies are the design moments that I think make this quilt engaging. Each urn block is not a carbon copy, but I am left wondering how she achieved such astounding replication of placement in each them. Look and you will find perhaps a difference in spacing equalling fractions of an inch, but for the most part the elements are in precisely the same location within each block, with each of the elements gesturing the same way as their neighbouring blocks … a jaunty little tilt to the left for one leaf … cascading blossoms that lean ever so slightly, but oh so symmetrically towards the ground.
Some differences in colour can be noted: the flipping of the placement for the red and green elements in a pair of flowers in one block; the substitution of a pink for a red in blossoms here and there; not enough to distract, but just enough to delight. I noticed there are subtle shade differences in the green of the urns … sun fading, unstable dyes, or different bolts of fabric?
Some of my other favourite moments in the quilt?
The borders that each highlight a different flower. One of the borders has a blossom that mirrors a flower found in the bouquets, but McCord changed the style of leaves for that border blossom. The other flower from the bouquets that is used in a border changes up the design of it’s centre. Notice how she didn’t mind using the same leaf shape on adjacent borders, and how she switched it up with a different leaf shape on the borders opposite those.
That her borders are different widths top to bottom and yet the same on the sides, what’s up with that … fabric she had on hand and wasn’t going to chop off and waste good fabric just to have all the borders the same width? A design choice for the type of flowers being used on each? Trying to get to an exact measurement for the bed it was to go on?
Those very vibrant orange dots on the urns. I swoon for dots! Those smaller dots that are situated right above the blossoms on the left … embroidered? Appliqued? Their diminutive size makes them double swoon worthy!
And finally, that fine binding that forms the most delicate frame around the entire composition. We know from the facts below that it measures less than ½”. Narrow single fold binding for the win … always … regardless if it is cut on the straight of grain or cut on the bias! I love Narrow Single Fold Binding cut on the straight of grain and have been using it for the past 20 years. You can find a tutorial sheet about Narrow Single Fold Bindings here on my blog.
Some other facts about this quilt:
Condition: Good/moderate use
Construction: Hand pieced, hand appliqued, hand embroidered
Borders: Top border 8.25 inches. Bottom border 8 inches. Side borders 6 inches.
Back: Solid/plain white cotton back, hand sewn, four pieces 30.5 in; 31in; 4in; 10in
Batting: Thin cotton batting, some milling debris visible.
Quilting: Hand quilted with white cotton thread at 10 – 12 stitches per inch, some quilting at 6 stitches per inches in brown thread; Urns are quilted with diamonds. The motifs are outline and self-quilted on a ground of diamonds. The borders are also outline quilted with additional quilted leaves. Blanket stitch is used to outline one type of flower
Binding: Separate binding was applied on the bias grain, handsewn with cording, measuring less than ½”
What other things have you noticed about this quilt? I would love to hear your thoughts!
I decided that this year there is someone whose body of work is definitely worthy of shining a huge spotlight on. And so, for this year’s Twelve Quilts of Christmas, we will be celebrating the work of Indiana quilter Susan Noakes McCord. To know me is to know my deep love for her work. McCord was a design genius, a highly proficient needlewoman and an extraordinary quilter. Her quilts are a testament not only to her artistic vision but to her tenacity in seeing that vision through to completion. I am in awe of her and her work. No other word will do. It is complete and utter awe. Her quilts leave me nothing short of breathless.
The majority of antique and vintage quilts that have survived to today are made by anonymous makers. It is exceptionally rare that we have the ability to study a large number of quilts from over a century ago, from a single maker, and especially one as gifted and prolific as McCord. The Henry Ford Museum has 13 of her quilts in their collection and we are so incredibly lucky that so many of her quilts survived. Different family members who had inherited her quilts cherished them and eventually sold them to The Henry Ford Museum: ten in 1972-1973, one in 1992, one in 2004, and one in 2011. I am so grateful they all did. I have shared two of them with you in past Twelve Quilts of Christmas: here in 2022 and here in 2016.
Here’s a little bit of what we know about Susan McCord:
Born in Susannah (Susan) Noakes, on 7th of October 1829 in Indiana, she met school teacher Arvin Green McCord and they wed on the 2nd of August 1849 in Decatur, Indiana. They eventually settled in McCordsville, Indiana, a town settled by one of Green’s relatives, making their home on an 80 acre farm. Susan and Green had 7 children: 5 boys and two girls. She was an ordinary farm wife who kept house, brought up her children, sewed and mended the clothing for her family, knitted accessories, embroidered linen and bedcovers, practiced homeopathic medicine, read her bible through each year, participated in sewing bees, tended the vegetable and flower gardens, took care of the cows and chickens, and participated in community gatherings – and in whatever small slices of time she had, she also made exquisite quilts. Exceptional quilts. The museum writes: “McCord used traditional materials, techniques and patterns—but her considerable skill at manipulating fabric, color and design turned the traditional into something exceptional. McCord’s bed coverings stand as the extraordinary legacy of an otherwise little-known Indiana farmwife.”
Tragically on December 6, 1909 McCord was kicked by a cow she had been milking and lay on the frozen ground for hours before someone found her. She contracted pneumonia and died 6 days later on December 12, 1909. Susan and her husband Green are buried in the Oaklandon Cemetery in Marion County, Indiana.
Left, Susan McCord and family in front of their home in McCordsville, Indiana. Right, Green and Susan McCord
We know that there is at least one more quilt and other work by McCord that has survived, other than thirteen quilts at The Henry Ford. There is a photo in the collections of The Henry Ford, of a McCord relative holding a Drunkard’s Path crib quilt. And there are two other photos of large sheets that McCord extensively embroidered. More testaments to the fact that she was not an idle woman.
The first quilt this year, is Susan McCord’s Triple Irish Chain with Border.
Triple Irish Chain with Border Quilt, McCordville, Indiana, United States, c. 1900, 76” x 67”, Susan Noakes McCord. From the collection of The Henry Ford. Object number: 2011.221.1
The museum writes: “Susan McCord’s Triple Irish Chain demonstrates her considerable skill at manipulating fabric, color and design to turn a traditional quilt pattern into something extraordinary. Choosing carefully from her bag of scraps, McCord sewed thousands of very small fabric squares of varying colors together, resulting in a remarkably balanced, pleasing whole. Then she surrounded it with her unique vine border.”
The precision of her piecing in the quilt is impressive, her great attention to detail evident. And absolutely her color choices are pleasant and harmonious. This traditional design has been expertly executed and it results in a lovely “centre composition”. It is said there are 3, 630 pieces in the quilt, but I don’t think that includes all of the pieces in the borders. We really need to talk about those borders … her trademark vines … the vines that make her work unique and readily identifiable. She was very fond of these borderss and used them on numerous quilts. They undulate and calmly meander around the border, with multitudinous leaves, buds and flowers exploding off of them.
But look closely, because what you will see is that many of those leaves are not ordinary appliqued leaves made of a single piece of fabric. No, many of them are in fact individually string pieced (absolutely no strata here, despite the instructions in the famous book about her quilts), some of them using anywhere from two to six stings to make them. These leaves render me dumbstruck, heart palpitating Every. Single. Time. I. See. Them. They are stunning, simply stunning and unique to Susan McCord.
Not to be totally taken up with the sting leaves, we can’t miss that all four borders are different. And she doesn’t even try to resolve the corners with the vines. Instead one vine heads off this way, another heads off that way. None of that matters. You can tell she was having a marvellous time, playing as she went, using her keen eye to maintain a balanced composition for the whole. Can we just have a group sigh of delight as we look at it!
Some other facts about this quilt:
Condition: Good/moderate use
Hand pieced and hand appliqued
Borders: Sides are 3.75” and top and bottom are 4”
Solid cotton back, hand sewn, three pieces, 2”, 33” 33” (common width for the era was much narrower than today. That 33″ indicates she was using the full width of the fabric in piecing the backs)
Thin Batting, hand quilted with white cotton thread at 10 stitches per inch using floral motifs, single parallel lines and outline quilting in the borders.
Binding: No binding. Handsewn, the back and front have been turned in … what I call a knife edge binding.
So …. What do you think of Susan McCord’s Triple Irish Chain Quilt?
PS: The curation of this collection of antique quilts each year is my gift to you all. Please feel free to share this gift and send this post to your quilting friends far and wide. The more people joining us, the merrier. And please join in the conversation in the comments. I would love to hear from you!
This final quilt embraces the feeling of the season and highlights the theme this year twice, with both the circular design and all those berries! I love circles.
The green and red celebrate the season and that bit of yellow livens this design so wonderfully.
At once bold and delicate, cheery and intent, open and light … well … this quilt is simply a delightful way to end this collection of Circle Quilts by design.
I am so glad you all joined me for this year’s Twelve Quilts of Christmas. It has been a joy to bring these quilts to you this year.
Wishing you and your families a healthy and happy holiday season, and a wonderful New Year!
A quiltmaker, fabric designer, teacher, and speaker, Mary Elizabeth is also co-author of two best-selling books, “Small Blocks, Stunning Quilts” and “Small Pieces, Spectacular Quilts“. She has been a featured guest on The Quilt Show with Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims. And her work has been shown at international quilt shows and featured in many international quilting publications.
Mary Elizabeth believes in “Quilting With Abandon”, stretching traditional boundaries and creating quilts with a subtle salute to the past. She is enthusiastic about our quilting heritage and the lessons to be learned from the antique quilts she studies and collects. Her recent work examines the interpretation of traditional quilt designs through “gestured appliquéd lines” and the quilting stitch.
